Medieval Burgundian

Historical Overview Section

A list so unfashionable that this page was uncreated for almost a year before anyone noticed, which is a shame as its a funky little interlude in French history. The army of Charles the Bold's father, from 1363-1471. This followed a really messy time in Burgundy, as a few Kings had died off without leaving a proper set of heirs for a tidy succession, and the Navarrese and Medieval French both had fairly reasonable grounds to claim that their families now owned Burgundy.

After a bit of shenanigans, one of the claimants John The Good managed to engineer a legal fix, by getting some of the co-claimants to back him. John was firmly on the side of the Medieval French - largely on account of also being King of France at the time. After receiving the homage of the Burgundian nobility and being declared Duke in 1361 he hoped to merge the Dukedom with the Medieval French Crown. However, the various owners of the Burgundian Estates made pronouncements that the Duchy intended to remain a Duchy and had no intention of becoming a province of the royal domain. This was a legal quagmire, and John was bogged down in it, to such an extent that he gave up and instead appointed his favourite (but not oldest) son Philip as Duke, leaving him to sort it all out when he died soon after in 1363...at which point the older son Charles V became King of France, and Philip was Duke of Burgundy.

Under the Valois Dukes of Burgundy, the Duchy flourished and a marriage between Philip the Bold and Margaret of Dampierre reunited the Duchy with the County of Burgundy once more, as well as with the County of Artois, but also served to bring the wealthy Later Low Countries Counties of Flanders, Nevers and Rethel under the control of the Dukes. By 1405, following the inheritance of the Duchy by the well-marketed John the Fearless, Burgundy stood less as a French fief and more as an independent state which was a major political player in European politics.

Philip the Bold had been, in politics, a cautious man. His son, however, was not, and under John the Fearless, Burgundy and Ordonnance French Orleans clashed as the two sides squabbled for power. The result was an increase of Burgundyâ€™s power; but the Duchy came to be regarded as an enemy of the French crown, and from the death of John the Fearless in 1419, the Dukes were treated with caution or outright hostility by Charles VII and his successor, Louis XI. The last two Dukes to directly rule the Duchy, Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, attempted to secure the independence of their Duchy from the French crown. But that's a story for the Ordonnance Burgundian list

Allied Contingents

They were too uncool for anyone to ally with them.

Using the army in FoG

You can take an awful lot of knights, and in the core list you can mix them with lots of Picard longbows to support them with. A classic option is to take only the minimum foot and use them to guard the camp, and then attack in a wall of knights across the table

Picard Longbows are not English. They are drilled, so can manoeuvre cleverly, but the lack of a sword makes them brittle in combat - keep them in rough going wherever possible/at all times

Average Knights are the wrong choice in 99 out of 100 possible situations â€“ and undrilled really sucks too.

A deployment that alternates Knights and Crossbows may not be a bad choice against enemy LH/Cv. It lets you deploy knights with some ranks in reserve with the gaps filled with Xbows to help chase away (or at least make life challenging) skirmishing enemy

Men at Arms, English, Low Countries and Swiss start to stack up as a good solid offensive infantry fporce - but you may need them all, and to remember to dismount the knights to generate a big enough line of troops to force the enemy to take them on.

Crossbow units generally are troops which do not win battles. They can cause heavily armoured and armoured knights pause for thought and are pretty good against cavalry but generally unless you expect to face off against lots of knights, or cynically plan to use them as a unit of 4-6 in column to support spearmen from behind you may be better spending points elsewhere on game winning units.

The 8 (yes, 8, not 6) Longbows can take rough and shoot up troops.

Pikes can take on 'superior' knights, while Men-at-Arms support/posture/kill easy stuff.

The 4-strong crossbows can usefully support 2 8-strong units by forming a column behind them both

UK Tournament Results with this army

Collecting and Painting the Army

Burgundians are reasonably popular, so a quick Google search will throw up many well painted examples, but mostly of the Ordonnance Burgundian .

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